More top editors tell us how Covid-19 has affected all aspects of
their jobs.
By the Editors Only staff
Readers
continue to comment on how the Covid-19 crisis has impacted their
publications:
Susan Buningh, executive editor, Attention
magazine, director of communications, CHADD
Even before our
office closed on March 16 and our entire staff began working remotely,
the coronavirus crisis affected every aspect of our nonprofit's
communications and publications staff. We are still publishing a
bimonthly print and digital magazine, but we are between issues so I am
uncertain of the immediate effect on our advertising. Advertising
revenue has been down for the past few years. We publish a weekly
e-newsletter, but only one of those issues carries advertising. No new
ads were sold for the March issue, which came out the last week of
March. I won't know the status for April until later.
In response
to the crisis, we reworked our planned content for the magazine and
newsletters. We began publishing at least three blogs per week with
content tailored to the needs of our audience, which is more frequent
than our usual one or two per month. We also increased the number and
frequency of podcasts featuring experts; so far, in one month, we have
recorded more podcasts in response to the crisis than we usually record
over the course of a year.
My tip for other editors: Be nimble.
Yadin
Roman, editor-in-chief, Eretz magazine
Most of the
editorial staff is working from home. As we are a
geographical-leisure-history magazine, advertising content has zeroed.
Outstanding advertising has not been paid.
On the other hand: As
people have more time to read, sales of new subscriptions and especially
book sales have grown. I have the impression that one of the results of
the crisis will be a surge in print material -- books and magazines. A
large segment of magazine and print book readers are in the 64-plus age
range; here in Israel most have a regular pension.
For this
segment of the population, there will be a decline in many leisure
activities, especially where groups of people gather together in crowded
circumstances (theater, flying, large hotels, etc.). Some of the "spare
time" thus created will be for stay-at-home activities (or long stays at
B&Bs, for example). This will promote reading -- and the pleasure in
reading -- a nice printed book or high-quality design magazines.
Name
withheld by request
Right now, my editorial team is going
about business mostly as usual, since we're a fairly small team, and
many of us worked remotely before being ordered to do so. We put out
daily e-newsletters and monthly print issues. Advertising for all of
those is steady at this time, but I imagine there could be a trailing
effect as those clients pare budgets. There will be no industry trade
shows or events for staff to attend this year, although some are moving
to virtual events that may work for getting content.
This is the
first print issue we will do with zero physical contact or signing off
of the pages, so we are using the comments tool in Adobe Acrobat to get
across notes and corrections between editorial and production.
We
have shifted to putting out more podcasts of interviews with key people
in our industry, which includes a weekly sponsored email that promotes
the new episodes. We also have done and will continue to do more
in-depth sponsored video interviews or tours on a particular topic.
We
are part of a larger company that puts on a lot of events, however, so
the future is still not certain, regardless of the strength of our
segment currently.
Deborah Lockridge, editor-in-chief, Heavy
Duty Trucking
Advertising has definitely dropped,
although I can't tell you by what percentage. Most significantly
affected were the events we had scheduled, which have all been canceled
or postponed. I'm operating with a much-reduced editorial team, yet
there's a lot of pressure to come up with more Covid-19 coverage -- both
to serve our readers and because it's one area advertisers still seem to
have an appetite for sponsoring.
Trucking is significantly
affected by the pandemic. As an essential industry, trucking transports
everything from medical supplies to groceries to, yes, toilet paper. At
the same time, as the economy overall slows down, freight overall is
scarcer. And there are global supply chain issues rippling through all
this as well. Fleets want to know how to keep their drivers safe, need
to stay on top of changing federal and state exemptions and guidances,
and want analysis to help them figure out where we go from here.
So
we're working very long days. The print product is taking a backseat
right now to digital coverage, webinars, resource centers, photo
galleries, and exploring new content types for us, such as video blogs,
recorded Zoom conferences, and podcasting. We're doing a lot of
webinars; we have shrunk what's normally a months-long process for
producing webinars down to anywhere from 2 weeks down to 72 hours.
I
would say a good 80 percent of our content focus right now is Covid-19
related, although we are still addressing many of the regular topics our
readers need to keep their businesses running efficiently. We ditched
our planned cover story for our May issue to instead focus on interviews
with fleets and how they are handling the situation. Longer-term
planning -- and, to be honest, meticulous proofreading -- have also
taken a backseat.
We're reaching out to non-journalist industry
experts for more guest content. We're also coordinating more closely
with sister brands at our company where our audiences have some
overlapping information needs. We've gone from monthly calls with that
group to weekly ones, plus more email and Slack conversations as well.
And
while I've worked from home for years, having to do so has been a
challenge for colleagues who don't have a full office at home like I do.
It affects your productivity when you're working from a kitchen table on
a laptop with a VOIP phone app where callers can hear the clothes dryer
tumbling in the background. We find ourselves working and communicating
on evenings and weekends to try to work around some of those issues.
Communication channels are varied -- office phone, cell phone, text,
slack, Zoom, Microsoft Teams, email, and Asana.
Matt Whipp,
Haymarket Media Group
I'm a product person rather than edit,
but we are making some changes. As a B2B we are not sending print copies
but switching to digital editions during the lockdown -- there is no
benefit to anyone in sending a print edition to a closed office.
We
are also producing a lot of Covid-focussed content for which we are
removing access limits. As a trade journal we feel we have an important
role to play in sharing experiences from across the industries we cover
and giving a voice.
We've been introducing new polls on key
issues for which we can analyze the job titles of respondents. This has
given us some amazing insights and has led to some really compelling
content, with many times the engagement of what we'd previously
considered successful.
Rebecca Stauffer, managing editor, PDA
Letter
My publication, as of the first week in April, has
made access to all of our content free. Our publication audience
consists of pharma and biotech employees, so we felt this was a way to
help the industry we support by providing as much information available
as possible.
We're also posting Covid-19-related content on a
regular basis.
Rachel H. Pollack, editorial director, Scrap
magazine
The novel coronavirus pandemic hit the United States
as we were producing our magazine's convention issue. This issue is
typically at least 50 percent larger than a regular issue, with
substantial content devoted to the mid-April convention and exposition
and a lot of related advertising. In mid-March, my association announced
it was canceling the convention. We ended up removing from the issue all
convention content and many ads, rewriting and re-editing other content
that made reference to the convention or other canceled events, and
adding new content about the pandemic and the resources the association
is providing to help members address it. This resulted in a delay in
production, less advertising, and a smaller issue, but we will save some
money on printing and distribution.
Going forward, we of course
plan to write about the many effects the pandemic is having on the
industry we cover. We're also postponing stories that are less relevant
today. For example, we had scheduled an article on innovative places to
look for workers in a tight employment market, but now millions more
people will be looking for work.
We're expecting budgets to be
much tighter for our members, our advertisers, and ourselves; thus we're
planning smaller issues, less use of freelance writers, and less travel.
The pandemic and its response will also have a broader impact on the
editors' development, as we use in-person events and member site visits
as opportunities for education and networking. We are participating in
video conferences and conference calls, but they don't foster the
one-to-one connections that are so useful for developing sources.
AAAS
Science International, Inc.
There isn't anyone available to
comment as our priority at present is keeping the journal running
smoothly.
Sharon Shinn, co-editor, BizEd
BizEd
is a bi-monthly magazine, and for that reason we rarely cover extremely
current events in print -- such news will be out of date by the time the
magazine is in readers' hands. However, Covid-19 has been so
all-encompassing -- and has had a direct effect on our readers -- we
knew we had to cover it in some way. For that reason, we prepared a
number of pieces that we could post quickly online. In some cases, we
extracted less time-sensitive messages from our sources and then
re-edited those online pieces for print.
We have seen a drop of
about 30 percent in ads from our March/April to our May/June issue. Our
response was to drop our page count by about 12 percent, so we're still
providing about the same amount of editorial material to readers in a
smaller package. We're not sure what will happen as we go to produce the
July/August issue!
Tricia Bisoux, co-editor, BizEd
In
the months ahead, we know we'll need to stay in close touch with our
readers, advertisers, and advisors to learn what is happening with them
and what kind of information they will most value as this crisis
continues to unfold. Just as every other industry, magazine publishing
is going to be negatively affected by the pandemic, often in unforeseen
ways. Keeping our relationships strong will be vital in navigating that
uncertainty successfully.
Add
your comment.